Campbell Brown and CNN Get Tiresome On Barack Obama and Media Criticism

By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.

While channel surfing last night, I came upon an irate Campbell Brown on CNN, scolding Barack Obama with a mighty wind of righteousness.

I sat there, mesmerized, as Brown did an incredibly bad imitation of Keith Olbermann, whose audience, I suppose, she's trying to steal.

Apparently, CNN has decided to go the way of Fox and MSNBC and the Associated Press and be very opinionated in its evening news hours. Like we don't have enough of that.

Brown was chastising Obama because, as I noted here yesterday, he sort of laughed and dismissed the repeated attempts of reporters to get him to confess "I'm a stinking, worthless liar" on national television when asked about his campaign criticism of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

God bless her clueless self, or maybe just desperate for something to blather upon, Ms. Brown announced that Obama's good-natured evasion was an assault upon ...(wait for it, you know it's coming) ...the People's Right to Know. 

Mr. President-elect, reporters we hope are going to ask you a lot of annoying questions over the next four years. Get used to it.

That is the job of the media, to hold you accountable...

But this isn't about the media, it's about the American people, many of whom voted for you because of what you said during the campaign, and they have a right to know which of those things you meant and which you didn't.

Apparently, as you made clear Monday, you didn't mean what you said about Hillary Clinton. So what else didn't you mean?

You were wrong Monday. Annoying questions are about more than just the press having fun. Annoying questions are about the press doing its job, and the people's right to know.

Now I'm all for the people's right to know. But this was not George W. Bush's tragic decision to invade Iraq.

(And, just wondering, where were Brown and CNN with their outrage, holding folks accountable then?)

Nope. This was the usual little post-election minuet that, I'll wager, about 99 percent of the American people recognize, understand and dismiss as "just politics."

They are not being deprived of their right to know, Campbell. Lighten up.

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